No Patience For Planning? No Problem?

No more Mapquest. No more triangulating among friends. No more lengthy text conversations. No more wondering who’s around to meet up, where, and when. No more wishing it were easier to meet new people. Not with smartphone apps that have changed the face of meeting up with old and new friends.

Have you heard of Goby? It scouts your location and shows you a list of events by type. Schemer indexes and suggests activities recommended by other users. Meetways and Mezzoman help friends in two separate locations find a good place to meet up somewhere equidistant between the two. If you’ve already reached your destination, Assemble lets you blast out your locations and detailed instructions for how to meet you to numerous friends.

They don’t stop there. A slew of new apps is geared towards helping users to meet up with like-minded strangers; apps like these use subscriber data to coordinate encounters with other subscribers who happen to be close by. Highlight alerts users who come in close proximity with one another of any friends and interests they may have in common. Grubwithus arranges family-style meals at restaurants. Badoo, among other sites officially listed as chat-focused, are notorious for facilitating real-time dating connections and hookups.

So, what does this mean for you, if you’re not already using one or more of these apps? First and foremost—the days of complex planning are over. The hardest (or easiest) decision will be of which app to use—if you’re an early adopter, you’ll have to compare, but if you’re behind the curve, go with apps used by most of your friends.

About Scott Weiss

Scott Weiss is the founder of Somethumb, a creative services agency focused on web design and development. "Like" us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, "Plus-One" us on Google+, "Connect" with us on LinkedIn, and view our portfolio on Somethumb.com.